Large rock-face murals scattered across the desert in northern Saudi Arabia represent one of the most ambitious – and perilous – creative feats of ancient humans, with researchers arguing that the massive carvings acted as visual beacons, guiding people toward crucial water sources.
An international team of archeologists, under the banner of the Green Arabia Project, have uncovered 62 oversized panels etched into rock faces in the southern Nafud desert, dating back somewhere between 12,800 and 11,400 years – a pivotal window when the hyper-arid Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was giving way to a more hospitable climate. Sediment studies confirmed that seasonal lakes and wetlands were beginning to return to the region, creating short-lived opportunities for humans to travel deeper into the desert.
The panels included 176 engravings in three previously unexplored areas – Jebel Arnaan, Jebel Mleiha, and Jebel Misma – along the southern edge of the Nefud Desert in northern Saudi Arabia.
Rather than small, hidden petroglyphs, these panels covered giant cliff faces that stretched up to 39 meters (128 ft) in height – something that would have required adventurous artists to scale narrow ledges to leave their mark. As such, the researchers believe these panels were hugely significant, not just leisurely doodles in the desert.
Maria Guagnin
“Across the three areas, 62 rock art panels were recorded, containing 176 engravings,” the researchers observed. “Of these, 130 were life-sized and naturalistic engravings depicting camels (90), ibex (17), equids (15), gazelles (7), and aurochs (1), with individual representations frequently measuring up to 2.5-3.0 m (8-9.8 ft) in length and 1.8-2.2 m (5.9-7.2 ft) in height. In addition, we identified two camel footprints, 15 smaller scale naturalistic depictions of camels, 19 human figures, four human faces or masks, and six unidentified, partial engravings.”
Researchers believe that the scale and placement made these grand panels serve as visible “road signs,” marking water access points and travel routes across challenging terrain during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The team says the etchings would have been made by painstakingly “pecking” the rock surfaces with specially crafted wedge-shaped stone tools – which were excavated from a space directly below the engravings. The artworks’ visibility may have been enhanced with pigments – and while the study doesn’t reveal if residue was found in the etchings, the team recovered pigment pieces – mostly red –and a crayon of green copper-ore “paint” from below one of the sites.
“The rock art marks water sources and movement routes, possibly signifying territorial rights and intergenerational memory,” said co-lead author Dr Ceri Shipton, from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London.
Because of the time the art would have been created, scientists argue that visual markers of water sources would have been crucial for the survival of these early humans as they ventured through the desert.
“These large engravings are not just rock art – they were probably statements of presence, access and cultural identity,” said lead author Dr Maria Guagnin from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.
Artifacts located near the panels – stone points, the pigments and dentalium shells or beads – suggest long-distance ties to Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) communities in the Levant, hundreds of miles away. But these monumental rock panels appear to be a specifically local tradition, reflecting how smaller desert populations forged their own culture and dealt with the obstacles that came with living in a harsh, water-scarce location.
“This unique form of symbolic expression belongs to a distinct cultural identity adapted to life in a challenging, arid environment,” said Dr Faisal Al-Jibreen, from the Saudi Ministry of Culture’s Heritage Commission.
“The project’s interdisciplinary approach has begun to fill a critical gap in the archaeological record of northern Arabia between the LGM and the Holocene, shedding light on the resilience and innovation of early desert communities,” added Michael Petraglia, Green Arabia Project’s lead researcher.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Source: Griffith University via Scimex
